Occupy at One Appears Restless, Transformed

This article was originally published on Alternet and is reposted with permission.

10 a.m, New York City

There is no longer an Occupy Wall
Street.

That's
what all the mainstream outlets are saying this week, and they're right in one
way. What started as a couple hundred people in a park with no plan has turned
into a decentralized, distributed network of activists, affinity groups,
organizations and organizers, working on everything from free education to
fracking. And so, as New York's financial district was choked with glitter,
balloons, dance parties and a whole lot of police, Occupy's anniversary feels
less like a celebration of what was and more a demonstration of what's
becoming.

The
plan on paper sounded much like the plans for November 17, 2011: Shut down the NYSE bell. But it
quickly became very different. Maps handed out over the weekend (along with
pre-coordinated text message lists) separated the Financial District into
quadrants, each with its own theme: the Eco Zone, the Debt Zone, the Education
Zone, and the 99% Zone (which includes the original occupation site at Zuccotti
Park/Liberty Plaza). At 7 a.m., groups assembled in each zone to spread throughout
the financial district, staging creative actions as well as old-fashioned
sit-down protests, designed to confuse, distract, and infiltrate the heart of
Wall Street.

As New York's financial district was choked with glitter,
balloons, dance parties and a whole lot of police, Occupy's anniversary feels
less like a celebration of what was and more a demonstration of what's
becoming.

From
the red cube across from Zuccotti Park, one march headed out and down Broadway,
to run straight into the police barricades at Wall Street. But unlike last
fall, when the confrontations wound up as heated stare-downs between occupiers
and police, this time groups of people splintered off to do their
own thing. The maps had marked strategically important locations, like bank and
corporate headquarters, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Emblem Health, TD Ameritrade,
and many more.

The
NYPD, meanwhile, had set up its own occupation, more thoroughly shutting down
and annoying the residents of the financial district than Occupy ever did.
Barricades closed off all access to Wall Street and many other locations, as
well as encircling Zuccotti and lining both sides of Broadway. We spoke to one
woman who was headed to her first day of work on Wall Street and was not
allowed through the barricades because she did not yet have an ID—she
struggled with tears as she told her story.

The
police moved away from kettling and mass arrests a while ago and have settled
on a much more terrifying tactic—seemingly random snatch and grabs, yanking
people off the sidewalk out of a crowd. Artist Molly Crabapple was one such
arrest, seized at around 8:00 a.m. from a march on a sidewalk near her Financial
District apartment. So, too, was student organizer Isham Christie, grabbed off
the sidewalk in front of me, seemingly for crossing the street at Broadway and
Wall Street around 9:30. While Christie is a longtime Occupy organizer,
Crabapple is an internationally-known illustrator and artist (and, full
disclosure, a sometime collaborator with this author) whose Occupy-related
posters and prints have been wheat-pasted around the globe. According to
National Lawyers Guild New York president Gideon Oliver, the 100-odd arrests made by
11:00 a.m. also included a working legal observer, Damen Morgan, arrested while
taking down names of arrestees. The arrests have tended to be quick, sometimes
brutal, designed to intimidate and unnerve.

We
watched the "balloon bloc," "writer's bloc," and "free
university" blocs head out, and then an organizer I've known for over a
year grabbed my arm and told me, "You don't want to miss this."

I
fell in with her and a small group that wouldn't tell me the plan but warned me
that arrests were possible, and we moved down Water Street to the Chase
building around the corner. I fell back and watched the crew stroll
unhindered through the revolving doors—and pull out bouncing balls, confetti,
and a letter to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, which they read out loud—until the cops finally
came in. Most of them, including longtime members of Occupy's Direct Action
Working Group, made it out again just fine, though a few arrests were reported and NYU professor Andrew Ross of Occupy Student Debt was rumored to be among them.

Though
rumors abounded that the unions and community groups had abandoned
Occupy that wasn't the case. A few hundred union and community
group members braved the barricades at Zuccotti Park to come out in
support.

Reports
reached us that a group of clerics and other Occupy Faith members were planning
a symbolic sit-in in front of the Wall Street Bull, so we headed that way next
but found ourselves instead in a scrum on the sidewalk on Broadway where more
seemingly random arrests happened.

Other
reporters scattered throughout the Financial District caught other actions;
Nick Pinto of the Village Voice tweeted that the education and debt blocs were
joining up briefly to "symbolically enact their interrelation" by
shutting down an intersection and stopping a police truck. Molly Knefel of
Radio Dispatch reported, "Just saw a cop walking with a giant pink cross, I
assume confiscated from Occupy Faith." Citizen Radio's Allison Kilkenny
saw, "Two men in suits standing on corner quietly talking. Assumed they're
wall street until I heard them discussing #ows tactics."

Today
isn't about mass movement-building, though. That's the work these groups are
doing day in and day out, off the streets, in their communities, with friends
they met in and out of the park. Instead, these days now serve as a moment for
the diverse parts of left movements to come together, to remind the
enemy—financial firms and other big corporations—that they haven't
forgotten.

Though
rumors abounded that the unions and community groups had abandoned Occupy, in
New York City, at least, that wasn't the case. While the overwhelming presence of May
Day or even October 14 wasn't to be seen, a few hundred union and community
group members braved the barricades at Zuccotti Park to come out in support. A
crew from ACT UP, VOCAL-NY and Housing Works, many dressed in Robin Hood
costumes, called for a tax on Wall Street to pay for health care, including
AIDS care, and community group members from United NY, Strong Economy For All,
and New York Communities for Change rallied with workers from companies that
have been preyed upon by Bain Capital (and the now-famous and
continually terrifying 15-foot Bain Capital puppet).

But
even during the rally in Zuccotti Park, impromptu marches and actions
went on in Lower Manhattan. One group spontaneously shut down the West Side
Highway briefly on the way to Goldman Sachs and the World Financial Center. A
group, including several CodePinkers wielding hot-pink bras, held a mic
check outside of the Bank of America location adjacent to the park—until a
quick, violent arrest left the NYPD holding a fifteen- or twenty-foot perimeter
around the bank's entrance for no visible reason.

The
financial district felt alive with protest in a way that they hadn't even in the early days of
Occupy; it was impossible to keep a count of the people around because
they never stayed still. When Zuccotti Park filled up mid-afternoon with
people milling around like the early days—People's Think Tank and all—a march
promptly took off to try to reach the stock exchange before the afternoon bell.
The march clogged the sidewalks and resulted in several arrests, including that
of journalist and AlterNet contributor John Knefel, who according to witnesses
was walking on the sidewalk when he was pulled to the ground by NYPD
officers.

While
the big march didn't make it to the stock exchange, a few intrepid college
students did. A group of students from Middlebury College in Vermont, a liberal
arts school that sends many graduates to work in finance, visited New York for
the Occupy anniversary and were disturbed by what they saw as racial
disparities in the people who were being harassed by police as they attempted
to cross the barricades. They witnessed people of color being stopped, asked
for ID, held up, while well-dressed white people crossed easily.

Barrett
Smith, dressed in a shirt, vest and tie, was the first to try crossing the
line. "I held up my Middlebury ID, said 'I'm from Middlebury,' and they
let me right in," he told AlterNet.

"We
wanted to make a point about getting through the checkpoints," Anna
Shireman-Grabowski explained. So the group of them went in with their student
IDs—9 of them, men and women, all white. Then they held a mic check at the
foot of the stock exchange, calling attention to how easily they were able to
cross, and the white privilege that allowed them to do it. "The police did
come at us and ask us to move along, but didn't arrest us," Katherine
Murray noted.

"We
were able to exercise our rights, which are protected by the Constitution, but
there are people in New York City who can't walk down the street without being arrested,"
Smith said.

At
6 PM, the Occupy groups descended back on Zuccotti for a spokescouncil and
speak-out session, but I headed to One Police Plaza to check on arrestees. In a
small park across from the police building, Occupiers and friends and family
waited to greet released friends with love, support, food, water, and beer and
pizza at a neighborhood pizzeria doing a brisk business at its sidewalk tables.
A marching band played and people danced as some of the 155 or more arrestees
from the day trickled out—including faith leaders, journalists, and a lawyer
from the National Lawyers Guild.

That
part, and several other parts of the anniversary, felt like the old days at
Occupy. The mood in the park was jubilant and slightly defiant, the crowd either
celebrating the return and the sight of old friends, or enjoying the feel of
the occupation for the first time. Yet, Zuccotti didn't feel like the
center so much as a place to regroup and reach back out into the world, to take
a breather before trying something new. "Occupy" might not be the
right name for the movement anymore, as today's actions were less about holding
space than breaching it, breathing new life into it, and then leaving it empty
but with traces of what might be scattered like the glitter and confetti on the
floor.

The
movement isn't what it was, and who can blame it? As many have pointed out, a
year into the Civil Rights movement, the bus boycotts were still fighting.
Other tactics had barely been thought of.

The
mainstream media, and indeed much of the progressive media, is eager to
pronounce this movement over, to return to business as usual, to the latest
Romney gaffe or poll. But for too many Americans, business as usual ended in
2008 with the financial crash, or was never tolerable to begin with. Occupy
opened a space to discuss those problems and to dream of something better, and
there's no going back from that.

Interested?

Although she wasn’t politically active before Occupy Wall Street, Grace
Davie threw herself deeply into the movement. One year later, she finds
herself braver, wiser, and stronger in her personal life.

The writing’s on the wall—literally. Occupiers in L.A. take to a new medium and spread words of protest with chalk.

In the Amazonian backcountry, tribes are challenging construction of the
world’s third-largest dam—by dismantling it. Here’s what they can teach
us about standing up to power.

No Paywall. No Ads. Just Readers Like You.You can help fund powerful stories to light the way forward.Donate Now.

Sarah Jaffe is an
associate editor at AlterNet, a rabblerouser and frequent Twitterer. You can
follow her at @sarahljaffe.